ght have been with the notion of showing himself
at ease that he turned, on this, a benevolent smile to the girl. "But
what, my dear, is the objection--?"

She looked gravely from him to Vanderbank and to Mitchy, and then back
again from one of these to the other. "Do you think I ought to say?"

They both laughed and they both just appeared uncertain, but Vanderbank
spoke first. "I don't imagine, Nanda, that you really know."

"No--as a family, you're perfection!" Mitchy broke out. Before the fire
again, with his cup, he addressed his hilarity to Mr. Longdon. "I told
you a tremendous lot, didn't I? But I didn't tell you about that."

His elder maintained, yet with a certain vagueness, the attitude of
amiable enquiry. "About the--a--family?"

"Well," Mitchy smiled, "about its ramifications. This young lady has a
tremendous friendship--and in short it's all very complicated."

"My dear Nanda," said Vanderbank, "it's all very simple. Don't believe a
word of anything of the sort."

He had spoken as with the intention of a large vague optimism; but there
was plainly something in the girl that would always make for lucidity.
"Do you mean about Carrie Donner? I DON'T believe it, and at any rate
I don't think it's any one's business. I shouldn't have a very high
opinion of a person who would give up a friend." She stopped short with
the sense apparent that she was saying more than she meant, though,
strangely, as if it had been an effect of her type and of her voice,
there was neither pertness nor passion in the profession she had just
made. Curiously wanting as she seemed both in timidity and in levity,
she was to a certainty not self-conscious--she was extraordinarily
simple. Mr. Longdon looked at her now with an evident surrender to his
extreme interest, and it might well have perplexed him to see her at
once so downright as from experience and yet of so fresh and sweet a
tenderness of youth.

"That's right, that's right, my dear young lady: never, never give up a
friend for anything any one says!" It was Mitchy who rang out with this
lively wisdom, the action of which on Mr. Longdon--unless indeed it was
the action of something else--was to make that personage, in a manner
that held the others watching him in slight suspense, suddenly spring to
his feet again, put down his teacup carefully on a table near and then
without a word, as if no one had been present, quietly wander away and
disappear through the door left